Georgia World Leader in Software Piracy

According to the latest Business Software Alliance (BSA) and International Data Corporation (IDC) global software piracy report released in May 2010, Georgia is the country with the highest software piracy rate, 95 percent, with the commercial value of unlicensed software estimated at USD 22 million (EUR 16 million) in 2009.

In the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region, Moldova (91%) and Armenia (90%) take the second and the third place, closely followed by Azerbaijan (88%), Belarus (87%), Ukraine (85%) and Montenegro (81%). Next on the list are Kazakhstan (78%), Albania (75%) and Serbia (74%), followed by Bulgaria (67%), Macedonia (67%) and Russia (67%).

After them, there are Bosnia (66%), Romania (65%), Latvia (56%), Croatia (54%), Lithuania (54%), Poland (54%) and Estonia (50%). Slovenia (46%), Slovakia (43%), Hungary (41%) and the Czech Republic (37%) are at the bottom of the list with the lowest piracy rates in the CEE region.

The CEE is the region with the highest software piracy rate globally — 64% in 2009, which is a 2% decrease from 2008. The overall global rate increased from 41% in 2008 to 43% in 2009. In CEE, the value of unlicensed software decreased from USD 7 billion (EUR 5 billion) in 2008 to USD 4.6 billion (EUR 3.3 billion) in 2009.

The report states that having strong copyright laws is not sufficient without law enforcement, education and increase in public awareness. Governments should create specialized intellectual property enforcement units on national and local levels in order to effectively enforce local copyright laws and the WIPO Copyright Treaty, it was stressed in the report.

For more information, please contact Masa Lopicic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: Warsaw Business Journal; BSA